One summer day three ambitious youngsters from Iowa
arrived in Rocky Mountain Park in an old car, and without delay or
preparation set out to climb Longs Peak. They reached the peak by late
afternoon, and started down by what they thought to be a short cut. The
route became increasingly steep and their shoes, without hobnails,
slipped on the granite. The lads threw discretion to the wind and two of
them tossed their shoes ahead of them, hoping to find them below. One
boy stuffed his shoes inside his shirt and his ounce of judgment
undoubtedly saved the lives of all three, for it was but a short time
until they were trapped on a narrow ledge, with bruised feet, unable to
proceed. The boy with the shoes made his way perilously back to the peak
and down the regular trail to call the rangers. It was night when he
reached the ranger station. Darkness, broken by lightning storms,
delayed the "drag out" until the next day, when the two barefoot boys
were found on their precipitous ledge, almost frozen.

Foolhardy recklessness causes practically all of the
distress on the trails. Youngsters insist on blazing their own trails,
against warnings of old-timers of the mountains. The world's record for
"drag outs" is held by the rangers of Grand Canyon National Park, where
the approaches to the park are at a high elevation. From the rim of the
Canyon trails wind down to the river, and many people undertake the hike
down into the Canyon. It is down hill all the way, and as the hiker
continues to a lower elevation, respiration becomes unconsciously
easier, until by the time the river has been reached he feels not the
least tired and considers himself something of a hiker. Where they drop
out is on the way back, up hill all the way, with altitude against them.
It is exactly the reverse of the average hike. The "drag out" mules earn
their keep at Grand Canyon, and the saying is that, though it's the same
identical trail up or down, "it's seven miles down and seventy-seven
miles back."

It should be added here that the hiker who keeps him
self in trim by frequent walks about his home, who plans his trips and
knows where he is going and about how long it will take, who understands
his own physical condition and knows what he is equal to, almost never
is humiliated by having to submit to a "drag out." The rash ones, the
blundering ones, those who start out for a little walk and can never
turn back as long as there is another bend in the trail, are the kind
who make work for the "drag out " crew.

Of course, the confirmed hiker is not satisfied to
hit the trail once or twice or three times a year when he can get away
for a trip into the high mountains. He seeks out kindred spirits in his
own neighborhood and together they explore the trails or country roads
near by, and the first thing you know a new trail club has been born.
The growth of these trail or mountaineering clubs until every city of
importance has at least one and sometimes several would indicate that,
the automobile to the contrary notwithstanding, Americans are using
their legs for other purposes than to step on the gas pedal.

Trail clubs are not new to this generation, of
course. The forerunner of them all in America, the Appalachian Club,
celebrated its golden anniversary not long ago. Most of them have
adopted a mountain and mothered it, as it were, with all of its
glaciers, forests, streams, and meadows. Thus it has come about that
most of the more worth-while mountains of the land have been saved for
posterity.

When the Appalachian Club was formed half a century
ago by a handful of trail enthusiasts in Boston, it seemed as if the
wilderness known as the West never could be swallowed up. Yet within a
man's lifetime that almost happened. The Appalachians first turned their
attention to the White Mountains, which were then an impenetrable
wilderness known to but a few trappers and timber prospectors. The
Appalachians mapped the White Mountains and found no connected trail
system by which they could tramp for days on end, though there were many
short trails leading off from resorts or stations. It was then that the
idea of the "Long, Long Trail" was evolved.

Today the Appalachian Club numbers its members by
more than four thousand. It has a notable clubhouse in Boston and
chapters in New York and several other eastern cities. Its leaders
conduct weekly walking trips in the country about these population
centers and head annual expeditions into the more remote wilderness. The
club operates a chain of lodges and camps along the main trails of New
England, capable of accommodating several hundred members each night. It
was sponsor of a trail conference at which representatives of state
governments and of trail clubs met and planned a great interstate
continuous trail system extending from Georgia up the backbone of the
eastern mountain range all the way to the northermost tip of Maine.
This system of trails is now connected, and the eastern hiker can hit
the trail anywhere along the "Long, Long Trail" and keep going for weeks
on end without leaving the wilderness, yet all the time be within a
hundred miles of a metropolis. The Appalachian Club is particularly
interested in the national parks and forests of the northeastern states,
especially Acadia Park and the White Mountains forests. The Potomac
Appalachian Club's activities radiate from Washington, D.C. and extend
all through the Blue Ridge, especially Shenandoah National Park, while
the southern Appalachians are the prime interest of the Smoky Mountains
Hikers Club with headquarters at Knoxville, Tennessee.

After the Appalachians had demonstrated what trails
could do for the White Mountains, a group of trail lovers in Rutland,
Vermont, assembled, organized, and adopted the Green Mountains as their
particular orphan. The goal of the Green Mountain Club was the building
of two hundred miles of trails in their mountains. This was achieved and
met with such general approval that the club grew into a widespread
organization with chapters m half a dozen cities, including New
York.

When it comes to doing something big, the merit badge
goes to the Sierra Club of California. Casting about for some bit of
wilderness to which to be big brother and big sister, this trail
society, founded in 1892 under the leadership of John Muir, the noted
naturalist and sage of the mountains, adopted the Sierra Nevada. Thus
the Sierra Clubbers became the god-fathers and god-mothers not only of
the biggest mountain mass in the world, but also numerous living
glaciers, the world's oldest and largest trees, the highest waterfalls,
and the tallest peak in the United States, not to mention the country's
lowest depression, Death Valley, nearly three hundred feet below sea
level, right next door.

It goes without saying that looking after this vast
area has kept the club busy. At least once each year the members pitch
tent as near the timberline as possible, somewhere along the long John
Muir Trail, skirting the skyline of the Sierra, and literally hundreds
of men and women undertake personal inspections of the great Sierra
peaks. The Sierrans hold that camp comfort adds to the joy of mountain
climbing, so it is the practice of this organization to scour California
for the best camp cook in the world, and his presence along with all the
food anyone can eat, plus plenty of blankets to keep warm, adds to the
zest of mountaineering.

This annual outing of the Sierra Club is a momentous
affair, and the Sierrans take no chance of being incapacitated. To keep
fit for the big hike each summer, they organize trail trips each
week-end from San Francisco and Los Angeles, into the near-by mountains
with which those favored cities are blessed. For all its enormous size,
there probably is no mountain in the world so well explored, so
thoroughly trailed, and so easily accessible as the Sierra Nevada. Six
months of the year its higher regions are locked in the arms of winter,
but during the arid California summers Sierra trails are dry and safe
and the atmosphere is perfect for hiking. Four great national parks,
Sequoia, Yosemite, Kings Canyon, and Lassen, lie in this fastness, and
half a dozen national forests.

The Mazamas live in Oregon. Their name they share
with a mythical mountain said by geologists to have been at one time
among the highest peaks in the United States. Too late the Mazamas
organized to protect this mountain for it tumbled into its hollow inside
a million or so years ago and thus became Crater Lake. Nevertheless,
they are the patrons of the defunct mountain and the more practical
minded of the Mazamas have turned their attention to Mount Hood, not so
high but probably as beautiful. Every time some engineer proposes to
build an incline railway up Mount Hood, the Mazamas set up a terrific
protest, with the result that all such ideas have failed. Mount Hood is
reserved for those who travel by trail, as the Mazamas do, not only on
its slopes, but in the verdant forests of Oregon.

The trail devotees of Washington found themselves
well supplied with noble mountains, what with Rainier, Olympus, Baker,
and others. Their society is called the Mountaineers, with headquarters
in Seattle and chapters in Tacoma and Everett, while on the other side
of the Cascades they are assisted in mothering the mountains by the
Mountain Club of Spokane, independent but devoted to the same forests
and trails.

There are numerous other trail clubs, each active in
its sphere. The largest of the Rocky Mountain trail clubs is the
Colorado Mountain Club, with headquarters in Denver. The annual summer
outings of this club are spent high on the trails of Yellowstone,
Glacier, or Rocky Mountain National Parks. The winter outings of the
Colorado Mountain Club are held at Fern Lake in Rocky Mountain National
Park where for several days each February its members revel in snow
sports at zero temperatures.

Nor is it necessary to have near-by mountains to
adopt to justify a trail club. Chicago has a Prairie Club, with many
hundreds of members, devoted to the cause of saving a little of the
wilderness in the Great Lakes region. The Prairie Club turns to both the
Rocky Mountains and the Appalachians for annual outings on the trails.
It is especially interested in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park,
but the Smoky Mountains Hikers Club, one of the finest of all these
outdoor climbers' organizations, claims this noble range and never a
week goes by without a party of its members finding its way up a high
peak or ridge in the most rugged of all the eastern mountains. The
Pennsylvania Alpine Club, with chapters in several cities, musters
several thousand trail enthusiasts pledged to the protection of the
forests, the mountains, and the wild birds and animals of the state. And
there are numerous other societies, among them the Izaak Walton League,
the rolls of which include the names of 150,000 fishermen, hunters, and
lovers of the out-of-doors interested in the conservation of the
wilderness.